Part 30 (1/2)

Close to an hour pa.s.sed that way. Finally Laura stirred and sat up and looked into her servant's face. ”When I ask you to dig up this grave, I'm afraid the world will end.”

”But, Laura, we already know that it doesn't.”

It was true. They knew that an invalid would ride on the roof of a train, and convicts fleeing through a forest would look down on a bonfire on the beach like the beacon of a better world. They knew a girl would get a beautiful horse, friends would ride together down a wild river, a boy would find a spring pus.h.i.+ng through a seam of coal on his father's property, a drought would end, and a mother would shelter her child while an earthquake shook the scent of honeysuckle down over them. And they knew that some lost, grown child would wish so hard for salvation that he'd have a vision of his mother waiting for him at the gate to Paradise.

”Laura,” Nown said, ”you came here and waited for me so that you could ask me to dig up the grave. You didn't need me to tell you any of this.”

Laura nodded. He set her away from him and began to delve in the dry earth of the mound, digging quickly with his hard, transparent hands.

”Wait,” she said. There was more to say. She had said it already, but it was one of those things that couldn't ever be said enough. ”I love you.”

”Yes.” Nown waited, reasonable, peaceable, his dust-gloved hands poised above the crumbling rent he'd made in the piled earth. Then he set to digging again.

The man lying in the shallow hollow in the earth looked dead, his face gray with dust over black grime, coal dust in the pores of his skin. His face was familiar. Curiosity made Laura daring. She licked her palm and ran a lock of his hair through her wet hand. His hair was grimy too but showed a trace of a true, bright red.

”I've seen him before,” she said to Nown. ”He was building a wall in a dream. He crept over to me and pulled a paper from his mouth. It was the bottom part of the letter Cas Doran wrote asking the ranger to follow Da. He was also the man who stopped to help that crippled convict up when they were being hunted by dogs through the forest. And I think he's one of the convicts working on the stone bridge in The Water Diviner. And he's one of the convicts in Convalescent One, in leg irons, standing on the causeway.”

Nown seemed unmoved by Laura's wonder. He only said, ”Remember what I told you about the final N? You cannot end this Nown until you have first given it its voice.”

”Have pity,” Laura said.

”I will.”

Everything she asked her servant to do trapped her further in what had already been done. Nown's pity was a promise fulfilling itself over time-a long, inhuman time.

”Here, I'll help you,” Nown said. He took her hands and a.s.sisted her down into the shallow trench so that she perched above the body. She kicked toeholds in the wall of the grave, steadied herself, and stooped over.

The man had his hand on the wall, his index finger curled to make a mark. Laura glimpsed the wings of the letter W beneath the hand. She turned her eyes up to her servant, tried to find his eyes in the glowing, gla.s.sy nothingness of his face. She said, ”What will happen?”

”Ask him,” Nown said.

Laura bent to her task. She scratched an N into the wall beside the man's hand.

Nothing happened. No one spoke. The Place was as still as ever, a silent desert.

Laura thought of her family, separated, trying desperately to fix things.

She took the man's thin wrist in her hand. It was like touching a fresh corpse. The temperature of his skin was tepid, too cool for life. She moved his hand away from the wall, so that the W was exposed. Then she used his fingertips to wipe the letter away.

Far Inland, the compound of the Depot imploded. The buildings rushed together like matter in water pouring toward a drain. The timbers of the huts and barracks split as a slope thrust up under them, and all their bolted doors burst open.

Greenery-ferns, trees, vines-burst like fireworks amid the splinters and billowing dust. Fireworks that froze into permanence, startled trees above gouged, wet earth. Forest birds fled shrieking from the mess and circled up over a towering tangle of metal-fifty miles of narrow-gauge rail line concertinaed into fifty yards of mangled mountain forest.

And yet, by some miracle, this violence spared the few people there. A miracle of care and intention. When the barracks dormitories exploded, the yellow-clad bodies were momentarily cradled in huge fists of dust-dust as soft as talc.u.m powder-then released and spilled into the tree ferns on the forest floor.

Grace lay in the circle of Foreigner's West, a dusty blanket thrown over her for camouflage. She was asleep, despite the lumpy ground jabbing into her hip bones.

... the woman waited for him at the gate. He saw that her eyes were red, ruined by weeping. She stretched out a hand to him and clasped his wrist. He remembered that he was dreaming. He knew that the twilight was a landslide, and its silence his deafness.

The woman, small, young, strong for her size, tightened her grip and hauled him toward her through the arch of flowers, through the gate-to where it was cold and someone was whistling, and someone else was angry, slamming a teacup down into its saucer.

A fly made a tickling six-point landing on his face ...

Grace touched her face. The blowfly took off, bounced from her arm like an electrified thistledown and zoomed away. When its buzzing had faded, Grace heard a parson bird whistling above her, spitting and clanking in its characteristic mix of music and disharmony. She opened her eyes on green leaves, and the blue sky between them.

VII.

Lazarus Hame.

1.

OSE AND MAMIE WERE HAVING BREAK-FAST WHEN THE FIRST FIGURE CAME OUT OF THE FOREST. A MAN IN YELLOW PAjamas made his weaving way through the stream below the springhouse where the valley narrowed.

Mamie got up and opened the door to get a better look.

Another man came out of the trees. This one seemed eager. He blundered through the stream and raised his arms as if rus.h.i.+ng to embrace someone.

”What do you make of this?” Mamie said.

Rose had watched the film and listened to Laura's description of the captive dreamhunters. But these men had come from the forested foothills of the Riflemans, not appeared at the border on the avenue.

Mamie flicked Rose an anxious look. More figures were walking down the valley. They were mostly men, but a few were women. They all seemed disoriented, then very excited. They saw the house and hurried toward it.

”They don't seem to be together, as such,” Mamie said.

Rose joined her friend at the door. They waited. Several servants joined them, two footmen, one carrying a cricket bat, and a maid with a feather duster, who had seen the men from an upstairs window and now looked as though she wished she'd remained upstairs.

There were more yellow-clad people arriving all the time.

”I don't like this,” Mamie said. She drew Rose inside and shut the French doors. She shot the bolts.

As they came upon the house, the people began to babble. At first they were speaking only to themselves, rapt with relief. ”This is my house,” Rose heard one cry. ”I'm home!”

”My beautiful house!”

”It was all worth it, for this!”

Several paused on the terrace, puffed out their chests, and gazed around them with proprietary satisfaction. Others headed straight for the front door. The footmen repelled two-then retreated inside and slammed the door. ”Miss Doran! What shall we do?”

”Don't let them in!” Mamie looked terrified. She and Rose joined the servants gathered in the entrance hall. They listened to the voices beyond the door. Raised, contending voices. It didn't sound like an argument; it sounded like a group of children all clamoring for attention.